How to explain what had happened? “I think it was some kind of glitch. I took out the first P-III, no worries, but then static came all over my visor. I could barely see. But then it cleared…and I got attacked by butterflies.”
“Butterflies?” His eyes widened with disbelief. “Wait, like, flying insects?”
“Pretty much,” I said, “They were made out of ice crystals. They froze the tank’s treads, and then a stone mouth burst out of the snow and ate me.”
Joshua stared. “You were playing Soviet Storm, right?”
“Tanks and blood and cannon fire. What else would I be playing?”
“Well,” he said, “it sounds like you were logged into Fro-zone accidentally. You know, that one game I showed you?”
Vague memories flashed into my head. “The one with the ice cave, and spiders everywhere?” My spine tingled. I hated spiders.
Joshua nodded energetically. “The first level has ice flutters, called Frost Stingers. Like, a swarm of them. You have to use the Gauntlets of the Hell-flame to banish them.”
That was the way every fantasy game went. Use the Noun of the Noun to defeat your enemies! Fun, sure, especially if I was in that kind of mood… but in general, I preferred realism.
“So,” I said, “what were they doing in Soviet Storm?” I narrowed my eyes. He was a programmer. Sort of. “Joshua, did you put the butterflies in my game? To try and ruin it?”
He squinted back at me. “You think I know how to do that? I’m failing my programming class. I can barely construct a linked list, let alone modify a complicated sim—about something I know nothing about—without breaking it horribly.”
This was actually a good point. Joshua was far too busy slaying dragons or whatever to do his homework.
“So what the hell was it?” I asked.
Joshua put his helmet back on. “This sim is multiplayer. You host, I’ll join your game. I gotta see this.”
* * *
A short while later, gloves and helmet back on, I was back in the war. I loaded from the save point after the tutorial. Joshua logged into my game, his T-34/85 trundled alongside mine. I looked it over and used my left index finger to pull up the information about it.
He’d called it Joshua’s Tank. I didn’t realise you could customise your vehicles. I might call mine Fist of the Motherland. Or Stalin’s Iron Will. Or—
Focus. I needed to focus. Renaming could come later, when I had an idea what was wrong with my sim.
A familiar rise greeted me. I knew what was beyond it. A row of teeth, a mouth that would swallow me whole.
“There it is,” I said.
“Yeah.” Joshua had played this level before. “Let’s go.”
Joshua’s tank headed aimlessly over the ridge, peeling off to the left, listing lazily across the tundra. He completely ignored the rocks and was completely exposed, his tank was silhouetted against the sky. Basically a prime target.
“Driver,” I said, “move behind those rocks. Execute hull-down.”
“Of course, Comrade-Sergeant,” said Baranova. My tank slid into the protected area, hiding my hull from enemy fire. This was the same place I was before.
Joshua continued to drive lazily in a slow, straight line. Too slow. Just as I predicted, German cannons found him and fired. Joshua’s tank was struck twice, both times doing damage to his hull. “You know you don’t have to talk to the NPCs, right?” he said, completely ignoring the fire burning at the rear of his vehicle. He fired with all his machine-guns. He was way out of range. How had he even passed this level?
Ignoring Joshua for the moment, I once again zoomed in. The Panzer III was where it was last time, boxy frame huddled down against the snow for protection, its turret pointed at Joshua’s tank. They would be ready to fire again in moments.
I made sure the shot accounted for distance and wind, and then I curled my trigger finger.
“On the way,” said Baranova.
This time, my cannon shell blew through the glacis plate of the enemy tank, leaving a fiery red hole in the hull. It didn’t explode, but the turret slumped slightly and smoke poured out of the barrel. They were out of the fight.
From that hole came not butterflies but something more… little creatures, about the size of toddlers, with butterfly wings and large, balloon-like heads full of teeth. They had a distinctly insectoid appearance, like weird faeries covered in ice. They buzzed as they flew towards us.
I waited for them to attack. The faeries latched onto the hull of my tank, crawling all over the turret, and it began to ice over again.
“See?” I said. “What did I tell you?”
“Oh,” said Joshua. “Hang on.” His hull slowly turned towards me. A bright flicker leapt from the hull machine gun, and I realised, suddenly, that he had customised more than his tank’s name. The flame was a pilot light. He’d selected the OT-34/85.
Flamethrower variant.
I double-tapped my index finger and my avatar buttoned the hatch, sealing herself in the turret just in time. A wave of fire washed over my tank.
The faerie creatures shrieked as the flame touched them, making a horrible wailing noise that was far too human for my liking. Each of them exploded into a cloud of black blood as they died, splattering my tank with the stuff. The graphics were great.
None of my crew seemed to react to this. Buzinskaya reloaded. Nemtsev manoeuvred the hull, bringing us further up the ridge. Joshua’s hull-mounted machineguns chattered, cutting down the Pak-38, and two shots from my cannon silenced the remaining two panzers.
MISSION COMPLETE
“See,” I said, pulling off my helmet. “I told you there were weird things.”
“Yeah,” said Joshua, swivelling in his chair to face me. “They were the Froststingers; they’re fey from Fro-zone a’right. I used to grind on them for xp because I was a fire mage, so I wouldn’t exhaust charges of the Gauntlets of the Hell-flame.”
“You’re saying a lot of words,” I said, “can I have that again in English?”
“I killed a lot of them because I’m ‘leet.”
Okay. Whatever. I got it. I wanted to say something sarcastic to him, but instead, I saw a thin trail of blood running down from his nose. Dark red. Very dark. “Your nose is bleeding,” I said.
He tilted his head at me, touching his nostril. “So’s yours.”
I mirrored his gesture and my finger came away tipped with blood.
Or was it? It was red, certainly, but very dark. Darker than it should have been.
“Weird,” I said, cradling my helmet in my lap. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my crew avatar portraits hovering in front of the screen, waiting for me to select them and be ready to move onto the next mission.
Their noses, too, were bleeding.
“What the…” said Joshua. He showed me his helmet.
The generic crewmembers he’d selected also had dark trickles running across their faces like rivers on a map.
My face felt cold and I wiped the blood off on my sleeve. “I don’t like this,” I said. “What is wrong with this game? How can it make us bleed in real life?”
“You were injured,” said Nemtsev’s avatar, from within my sim helmet. “Blood springs from blood.”
No way. I slowly put my helmet back on. My loader’s avatar was a floating head and shoulders, hovering above the selection screen to load the next level.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Were the NPCs supposed to talk in this section?
“You were hurt by the Queen,” she said. “Your friend’s vehicle was shot. Yours, burned. So she, in turn, bleeds you. This is the way of all Shards.”
I scrunched up my face, trying to understand. “Who is the Queen? What’s a Shard?”
“The Queen,” said Nemtsev. Not really an answer. “She is known as the Gossamer Shard. A ghost of a living creature from another world: The Realm of Faerie. She escaped through the game of Feyland.”
“Feyland?” I had heard of that game. “How d
id she get here?”
Nemtsev’s face took on a somber air. “They say that every time someone says: ‘I don’t believe in fairies’, a fairy dies. If only it were that simple. Heroes defeated the Queen, but a piece of her broke off from her soul, a splinter in the digital realm… her ghost, if you will. It found its way to this place. Soon her influence will spread to other games.”
“How are you able to talk to me like this?”
“There are other shards,” she said. “Less powerful, such as I. I can only influence the game in a much more limited fashion. You should know that the ghosts of the Realm reach out for you. You are not safe.”
I shook my head. “What if I just don’t play?”
“Then,” said Nemtsev, all her levity falling away completely, “you will wither away and die. The Queen’s signature is leeching the mortal essence of those she bests. Greatly weakened is her ghost, but undoubtedly the power remains. She wishes to rebuild her mortal essence. Blood is the key. Black as coal, dark as night.”
Dramatic. “Okay,” I said, “so how do I stop it? How do I stop her?”
Nemtsev tilted her head to one side. “Destroy the Shard, of course.”
“Okay. How?”
“The Shard will want to slow you down. Her mouth will find you if you are weak. Every bite steals from you. Every failure weakens. The longer you take, the more power she gains. She will try to make you take as much time as she can. She will hide in the end of the game.”
Well, that didn’t seem too good. “Right,” I said. “So all we need to do is push through to the end of Soviet Storm and kill her?”
“So simply stated,” said Nemtsev. She seemed amused. “The Shard’s will is strong.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It took me a second to realise Joshua was looking over my shoulder.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I said, glancing behind me.
“Mmm.” Joshua took a deep breath. “It’s fine… we just have to kill a ghost from another world in a video game neither of us has played for more, than, like, an hour, in a sim-café, and it’s already 5:00pm. So…” his voice trailed off. “We’re going to be late for school tomorrow.”
“We’re going to be late for school tomorrow,” I echoed, and I turned my thoughts toward the task at hand. “Tell me how to change my tank.”
“It’s easy,” said Joshua. “Before the level starts, go to vehicle selection.”
I did so. A whole world of options opened up before me, some of them I didn’t even recognise. “This is comprehensive,” I said, browsing through it.
“I just picked the flamethrower variant because it was the last one,” said Joshua. “The last one on the list is always the most powerful.” Typical.
I reviewed the flamethrower tank Joshua was driving. “It says here you have 20% less health, and 20% more chance to explode if your fuel tank is ruptured. That sounds bad.”
“Oh,” said Joshua. “But fire is cool.”
“But OT-34/85’s weren’t operating in this area,” I said, frowning. “Not at this time.”
“Who cares?”
“I care!”
Joshua threw his hands in the air. “If we didn’t have it, you’d be eaten by faerie bugs again,” he said, putting his helmet back on. What a sulk.
It was impossible to argue with him. I just rolled my eyes. Every tank had advantages and disadvantages. In the end, I stuck with the default. It had a nice, well-rounded layout. But I did rename it: Regicide
“Time for Level 2,” I said, and I clicked go.
* * *
Blood and fire. Steel and ice. The thunder of cannons, the chattering of machineguns, the roaring detonations of exploding panzers.
We played all night.
As the sun came up, Joshua’s Tank and Regicide pushed out from Smolensk to Belarus. We took Orša, got stuck a few times in Minsk, then drove on to Lithuania, Vilnius and Kaunaus. We skipped Stalingrad and any missions that were non-essential; there were plenty of those. Instead, we pushed on to Tilsit, in what was then East Prussia.
MISSION COMPLETE
MISSION COMPLETE
MISSION COMPLETE
My fingers felt sore and my eyes hurt. I was so sick of seeing that message pop up, I was sick of hearing the loud rumble of my tank, and I was sick of playing this stupid game and the cheating Shard; every mission had it. Anti-tank rockets that burst into swarms of butterflies. Mines that sprayed caterpillars everywhere. Artillery that fell like falling stars. Always with the fey creatures.
Joshua seemed to understand this better than I did. He understood that the laws of physics did not apply to this place; magic was bleeding into the world and changing it. But magic was always a part of his game worlds. He took the changes in stride, and even if he made horrible tactical decisions and couldn’t drive worth a damn, I could.
With Tilsit cleared of panzers I took my helmet off and slurped down some water. Fortunately the sim-café was 24 hours.
“We have to press on,” said Nemtsev. “The Queen’s Shard grows stronger.”
“I’m tired,” said Joshua. Even with his helmet on he looked like death warmed up, his skin was all clammy and pale. I was cold and hot at the same time, and felt like I was going to throw up all over my helmet. I hadn’t eaten anything. I didn’t think I could.
Nemtsev was right. Whatever had happened to us was going to kill us if we didn’t stop it.
“The final level approaches,” said Nemtsev. “This one will be different. The Queen knows you are coming.”
I didn’t know what to think, so I logged in. My fingers were sore from shooting so much.
A cut-scene. Regicide and Joshua’s Tank drove along a dirt road, surrounded by a beautiful Russian winter. Suddenly a huge explosion shook them and, together, the treads fell off the tanks. Fires started in the rear of the vehicles and smoke poured out of the engine compartments. We’d hit anti-vehicle land mines.
“This level is completed on foot,” said Nemtsev.
On foot? I had only just mastered the controls for manoeuvring the tank. I watched helplessly as my avatar climbed out of Regicide, shook her head at the ruined tank treads, and then unslung her PPSh submachine-gun. Now I had control.
Joshua walked over to my tank. He had a PPSh too, but also a cavalry sabre at his side.
“You’re taking a sword?” I asked, incredulously.
“Sure,” he said, looking at me like I was stupid. “I swapped it for the water canteen. I figure we can just eat snow if we start dehydrating.”
“But why?”
“What if you run out of bullets?”
I had like a hundred rounds. “That won’t happen.”
“But what if it does?”
“I’ll whack them with the stock. I’d rather take a portable anti-tank grenade.”
“A grenade? You can only use that once.”
Tired, frustrated, I didn’t want to argue any more. I brought up the menu, took away the extra water canteen and added the sword. “There,” I said as an identical blade appeared on my belt. “How do I move?”
“Moving is just like moving the tank,” he said. So I tried it, moving my hand forward.
A spray of bullets ricocheted off the tank’s hull and flew into the sky.
“Hey, easy!” said Joshua.
“Dammit,” I said. “I bumped the trigger. This is all manual.” Probably to make the last level that much harder.
“Well,” said Joshua, smiling at me, “this is where I come in. I can never manage to ride horses in my games, I always walk, so… welcome to my world.”
“You still need me,” I said, pointing to his weapon. “Your safety’s on.”
“Oh.” He fiddled with his gun. The magazine fell out.
We were going to die. “That’s the magazine release,” I said. I made sure to point the gun away from anything. “The safety is on the bolt. Right here.”
I spent a moment showing him how to load, aim and fire the weapon. Most games did it au
tomatically, but Soviet Storm… everything was manual.
Finally we set off, putting our boots to the Soviet tundra. Nemtsev walked with us. The rest of the crew stayed behind. The game showed them putting out the fires in the tanks, but I knew that fire would burn forever.
Field after field of pine trees buried in a thick blanket of snow shepherded us down a muddy road toward the nameless Soviet hamlet we were set to liberate. Land mine signs warned us that if we went too far away from the programmed game world, we would be blown up. So we didn’t.
“So,” I asked, after we’d travelled for a bit. “How do you think we’re going to beat the Queen?”
“The Shard will not be defeated easily,” said Nemtsev. “But while she is still reforming, she is a digital construct. She can bend, but not break, the rules.”
“If we shoot her,” said Joshua, “she’ll lose her hold on us?”
“Yes.”
That was good enough for me.
“Swords work too, right?” asked Joshua.
“Enough with the swords already,” I said, more frustrated at the game than him.
He started to argue—not that I could blame him, he was just as tired as I was—but I heard a distant rumble and I held up my hand to silence him. “Shh.”
Together, we listened. Carried by the wind, the rumble-whine of an engine reached our ears. Deep and low and powerful. Somewhere in the distance. The snow reflected the sound everywhere so discerning the direction was difficult.
“Maybe our crew got our tanks working again,” said Joshua.
There was no way. The mine had shattered the drive train and the hull was on fire. That tank was going nowhere.
The sound got louder and louder. The pine trees to our right fell forward as though a giant monster was moving through them. Breaking them down. Joshua, Nemtsev and I just stood around like chumps, guns in our hands.
Through the trees came a lumbering war machine that, with a powerful sinking feeling in my gut, I recognised.
A Königstiger. One of the largest Nazi tanks that ever saw combat: 70 tonnes of steel and death. A beast so terrifying that only the most dangerous tanks, such as the T-34/85, or a dedicated tank destroyer, had a chance against it—and even then only from the sides or rear. Meanwhile, its main cannon could penetrate the frontal armour of any Allied tank at any range.
Chronicle Worlds: Feyland Page 16